Hamburgers for Breakfast

Congee with dried seafood--yum! No you wouldn't have trouble eating in Japan (it is quite difficult for vegans). The sushi breakfast trend is limited, certainly not a regular thing. I consider it un-Japanese and strange. A trip at sunrise to look at the fish market concluding with sushi in one of the places on or just outside the premises is an exception. That's different.

In what we know as a proper Japanese 和式 breakfast (seen in many of the images) a grilled salmon or other fish is the main dish. Always rice, miso soup, a raw egg with nori seaweed, and natto ("fragrant" fermented soybeans). It certainly doesn't go with the aroma of coffee. Today we're in such a rush between getting up and leaving the house, and moms are way busier! We've also apparently bought into the notion of breakfast advertised on TV. So many more of us have a "western" breakfast--some kind of bread, coffee, fried eggs, maybe a miso or other instant soup, maybe cold cereal, yoghurt.

@bodawei - Yep, yep! I was mainly just having fun trying to decipher the foods I saw in the pictures and practicing my Chinese. :) And now you've made me curious about the options that are entirely outside the Western experience of Chinese food. I definitely tried some strange things when I visited my friend in Xiamen, but our breakfast wasn't too strange, just street food: 包子 (steamed buns), 馒头 (steamed bread), and a hot beverage made from grains, nuts and soymilk (I think) - I don't know what that is called.

You probably already realise this, but the 'Chinese breakfast' cannot be reduced to the few items you note. It is highly regional, and then there are traditional and contemporary forms. There is a vast variety of breakfasts - just in my province alone you could face dozens of popular options. Many of these options would be entirely outside the Western experience of Chinese food. Each province has its own cuisine. Even the 粥 (a staple that appears in many regions) varies significantly from region to region. It is not a Kelloggs Corn Flakes/ packaged cereal kind of breakfast culture that dominates much of the West. Although as discussed above, the modern Chinese family does buy a lot of packaged cereal - they just don't look like Kelloggs cereals. The Chinese are much less standardized than we are in this respect.

You are making me hungry! Stop that! :) I love Korean food...now I need to find a good restaurant here.

Googling those images is interesting! Mmm...the American breakfasts look so tasty. It is difficult to determine exactly what all the foods are for the different searches. So according to google images, a Chinese breakfast is: youtiao [油条], xiaolongbao [小笼包] (really?), baozi [包子], mantou [馒头], soup [汤], green onion pancakes [葱花饼], eggs [鸡蛋？- I don't know if there is a different word for cooked eggs], congee [米粥？], and many other things.

One morning I ate breakfast in the cafeteria here in Hong Kong - (normally I just get some bread and a coffee). They served breakfast with eggs, meat, toast and vegetables - a little different than the U.S., but not much. I decided to get the congee too. However I wasn't expecting it to have dried seafood in it. Blame it on my Midwestern heritage, but I really don't think seafood and breakfast should go together. I guess I might have some troubles in Japan?

Oh, I'm not surprised anymore. After knowing many more Koreans, this seems fairly normal to me...well, for Koreans that is. I still have no strong desire to have kimchee for breakfast.

yes， that is it

I am confused。。。

squash is not to be eaten unless its been mauled into pie filling. This is what I learned living decades in the US.

As long as you keep your cilantro out of my soup, I'm sure we can :)

Cilantro? I actually thought cilantro was pretty cool. But we can all get along.....

Haha. :D I knew you were joking. I was too. ;) And no squash? Is that specific to Chinese squash or you don't like it in general? I really like it with loads of butter and brown sugar (very Western). But then it doesn't taste too much like squash anymore. :)

...and... *shudder* Cilantro *shudder*.

If I never taste cilantro again in my life, I will be a happy man. :)

I was joking about the breakfast gruel. If there was a laugh in there (not really a good one in any event), it has run its course.

By all means, come to China, and try every food/dish/cuisine available to you, including this grey powder. I wouldn't form an impression on a food from someone else's observations either (unless it involved safety). I'm sure you'll love most everything you'll eat in China. I know I have (except squash).

@pretzellogic - If it makes you happy you can call it 'breakfast gruel' or 'gray paste' or something that sounds equally distasteful. :D j/k The truth is, if I had the chance to try it I'd probably like it, especially if I could make it by myself into a nice thick paste, which is how I eat my oatmeal. Oatmeal with substance!

now that it's been determined that you guys are talking about something like grits, can I go back to talking about "breakfast gruel" as something different? ;-) Or is someone else a fan, and I should pretend to be a mature adult?

Although I'm not a fan of grits either, but maybe this is because grits are so easy to screw up. I have eaten screwed up grits, and then had to pretend they were edible....

When I mentioned the 玉米面包 earlier I was actually referring to the western-style corn bread that I love to make and eat. I didn't realize that they made steamed bread from corn flour in China - but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. :)

Ok, Pretzl is right about everything except the colour - the corn stuff is definitely yellow. You can get other stuff like 藕粉 that is grey. And sweet is an option (sugar added) but we buy the unsweetened version. And add yoghurt, fruit etc. There is no difference in consistency between 玉米粉 and 玉米糊; it's a question of how much liquid you add (as Pretzl said.)

Now - corn bread is either 玉米馒头 (yùmǐmántou) or 玉米窝头 (yùmǐwōtóu) . Also 玉米窝窝头. There is a slight difference in the shape - the 窝头 is more 'head' shaped, with a little curl on top, the 馒头 is rounded.

I am sure you can have a 用玉米面做的面包 - but I have never seen them referred to that way.

Even more interesting though, in Yunnan we have a number of traditional pancakes - these are not Western imitations, they are in the local culture. Though not solely eaten for breakfast - also lunch and dinner. For instance, 荞麦饼 (made with pure buckwheat - these are the size and shape of Western pancakes, often served with a sweet topping)，玉米饼 (pure corn)， 南瓜饼 (pumpkin pancake - actually these are rounder, rather than the Western pancake shape)。 All three are gluten free by the way.

I just looked up some pictures of 玉米粉 and 玉米糊. It seems that 玉米粉 is just finely ground corn flour. 玉米糊 looks like yellow cream of wheat...which is basically what it sounds like it is, with corn instead of wheat. So it's kind of like grits, but smoother? (Keep in mind, I have never eaten grits.) I think I'd rather have corn bread (玉米面包?） or a Chinese pancake.

Bodawei made clear his preference for this food. So let me just say that the stuff i've tried, if indeed Bodawei and I are talking about the same thing, has had the "corn look and feel" processed out of it. It is a fine powder, (think baby powder or similiar) and was gray. You mix it with water to suit your tastes, so you can add a little water, stir it up, and it will be thick like paste, or add a lot, and it will be like soup. It did taste sweet. To me, this is in the category of "it takes getting used to". My daughters liked it, but once they tried pancakes, they stopped asking for this breakfast powder.

Bodawei made clear his preference for this food. So let me just say that the stuff i've tried, if indeed Bodawei and I are talking about the same thing, has had the "corn look and feel" processed out of it. It is a fine powder, (think baby powder or similiar) and was gray. You mix it with water to suit your tastes, so you can add a little water, stir it up, and it will be thick like paste, or add a lot, and it will be like soup. It did taste sweet. To me, this is in the category of "it takes getting used to". My daughters liked it, but once they tried pancakes, they stopped asking for this breakfast powder.

It sounds just like corn meal. So you don't actually eat this in powder form (the image in my head)? Does it turn into a porridge or is it more like a soup?

Oh no, I'm going to have to step in and defend my eating habits, when pretzl mentioned this I was hoping that it would just be ignored. Okay, most mornings I eat a powdery breakfast substance - it is powdered corn. Just imagine someone taking the fresh product, drying it and making it into a powder. Beats doing it yourself.

Actually you can usually buy this self-same product at a drinks shop - along with your juices, milk drinks, slushies, and Chinese medicine brews of ground up turtle backs you will find your 玉米粉, or 玉米糊 yùmǐhú is the one I buy - and there are other terms (sorry just can't remember them at present). The 糊 describes the consistency it goes to after your add boiling water or hot milk (don't look it up). It's much better than it sounds.

Powdery breakfast substance? Sounds revolting. What is it?

Oh sorry, I meant Duck Neck..not tongue.. but yes.. you probably haven't tried that either. The closest comparison I can make is sliced calamari fried in a light, salty sauce.. Yer.. it's a little bit chewy but not overly so.. if you didn't know otherwise, you could easily mistake it for sliced calamari. :)

Oh - that's ròujiāmó (肉夹馍）! Those are so good! svik - you should have tried them when you were in Hangzhou! I wonder if I can find them here in Hong Kong...probably not. I tried ròujiāmó in Hangzhou near West Lake because I'd learned about it from the CPod Vocab Tour lesson: "Street Food Buffet". http://chinesepod.com/lessons/street-food-buffet

Although for the ones in Hangzhou, the meat was chopped up and cooked with lettuce, still very flavorful, and nice and warm and wonderful, which was great because it was pouring rain and I was quite damp and cold.

@light487 - Ok...duck tongue is not one I've tried. What's it like? I've had goose liver - not really a fan. Here in Hong Kong I did have an entire octopus tentacle which was woven onto a stick. It was actually pretty good, but you shouldn't let it get cold. And in Xiamen my friend made me eat a whole small crab (just plain difficult to eat - how is this street food?). If you visit Hong Kong, I recommend the curried fish balls, especially if you can handle things that are extremely spicy.

My first street meal in China was one of those, I think. It was similar to a kebab I guess.. a sheet of bread not unlike pita bread but thinner with meat inside, usually with a healthy dosing of spices. Grabbed one of these on my way to the ChinesePod offices :) Very tasty! :)

I am a huge fan of street-vendor food though.. everything from Duck-tongue skewers to all the various styles of steamed buns. Seems each place has its own specialty of steamed bun :)

I just remembered 2 things from my time in Hangzhou last year. One, I saw many people eating, for breakfast on the go, a kind of fried wrapper with meat inside, perhaps not so different looking from a hamburger. And two, I once was speaking with 2 female graduate students who said they liked to eat hamburgers, especially when they were traveling. It was considered a convenient and filling meal. So, from that perspective the idea of eating hamburgers for breakfast seems possible. (but not for me)

svik: Well, I guess McDonald's doesn't even consider hamburgers to be breakfast food. :)

hi cinnamonfern,

I think they open the grill at 10:30 for hamburgers at McDonalds and the like. I probably haven't been to McDonalds since my son was eating happy meals :)

cinnamonfern: I confess that usually on Friday evenings, we eat breakfast food for dinner-- because we have run out of our regular dinner fare like chicken, pasta, meatloaf, etc. Then on Saturday morning we buy our groceries for the week. Last Friday night we had eggs and waffles (frozen Aunt Jemima brand). I have a long day at school, a long commute, and lots of Chinese homework so I tell my family we have to make do with what we have. They are okay with that.

This is just the Quaker Oats brand that he makes in a saucepan. Nothing fancy!

Hi abelle, I think most Japanese will agree with me that bagels, grits, waffles, granola (maybe not bars specifically), fruit, eggs and bacon all fall squarely under our perception of typical American breakfast foods. Not hamburgers or hot dogs though! That is funny.

If I travel in the US breakfast is the meal I most look forward to. I'll stuff my face with eggs benedict / fluffy buttermilk pancakes / a fancy omelette / hash and toast, or hot cereal, plus fresh juice and fruit. And be full for the rest of the day.

Hi abelle,

Oh grits. I'm from the South but it's been a long time since I'ved there. Is it easy to find grits north of Washington DC? Sorry for the crazy question but seeing you talk about grits took me back in time.